Category: Television

LOST: Interview with Ben

Ben Linus
Ain’t It Cool News has an interview with Michael Emerson, who plays Ben on LOST, which has a few tantalizing hints on what’s coming up soon!

Emerson mentions that Ben might have had to give something up in order to get that smoke monster to appear. That got me wondering: What did he give up? Part of himself? Part of his soul? What did he give it up to? The island?

Consider this: If it is the island, then he is likely not the first person to do this. In fact, Jacob might have done this in the past. Jacob might have done this so much that he’s now part of the island itself.

That black soot all over Ben when he came back out of the secret room (a secret room inside a secret room…gotta love that), might be the same stuff that they found outside encircling the cabin.

Anyway, enough of that. Read the interview, and comment here if you’d like. Interesting tidbit: Michael is married to the woman who portrayed Ben Linus’ mother.

(Thanks to John!)

Lost: The Shape of Things To Come


There was so much happening in this episode, it’s crazy.

Let’s see.. the random weirdness for tonight’s episode was:

The ship’s doctor died, but the people on the ship say he’s OK.

Ben has the ability to travel off the island using the same, or similar, method that got the polar bears off the island.

Ben wanted Locke to survive that ambush so they could go to Jacob together.

Ben had to ask the year when he finally made it to civilization, so the travel method he uses isn’t completely accurate. The date was Oct. 24, 2005.

For some reason, Nadia died. I don’t think she was the intended target. I think the target was Sayid. If that’s true, then the rest of the Oceanic 6 could be in trouble. Is the reason they’re not talking that Widmore has threatened them?

I was surprised that Alex died. That appears to be one of the reasons that Ben is going after people.

Ben’s secret panel with a room behind it has ANOTHER secret panel in it, leading to … Well, at first I thought it was Jacob, but it wasn’t him. Wonder what he did?

Ben smiled after Sayid volunteered to go after people for Ben. I think a lot of people, myself included, thought Sayid was doing this to help people stuck on the island.

Ben’s reaction to Alex’s death, “He changed the rules”. We found out later he meant Widmore, not Jacob.

Bernard knows Morse code, and Faraday finally admitted that they had no intention of taking anyone off the island.

Ben can’t kill Widmore??

Penny’s in trouble. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Ben tries to go after her, or if he tries to get Sayid to go after her.

That “He changed the rules” comment got me thinking. Did Widmore and Ben have some kind of uneasy truce? Widmore’s comments like “All you have you have from me”, MUST mean that he in some way financed either The Others or Dharma at some point. They must have had some kind of agreement that no one in either of their families would get hurt, in case it came to that.

All in all, a surprising episode in many ways.

What did you think of it?

Twittering LOST at MagicLampTV

If you want to join the live twitter of Lost tonight, follow along with MagicLampTV on Twitter, and you can join in too!

You can also follow along with the Twitter “tweets” in the new Twitter Flash plug-in on left side of the blog. I don’t think it updates, so you’ll need to follow along on Twitter if you want to watch live.

LOST Theory: Protecting the Island Through Time Travel

Lost logo
LOST starts again tonight! Can’t wait!

…But we do have to wait a bit, so here’s a short theory to think about before the show tonight.

We saw that the island has the ability to prevent things from happening. Michael’s gun jammed, and he couldn’t kill himself, just as Tom said. It stands to reason that’s not it’s only power. What if it set plans into motion so that Oceanic Air 815 fell out of the sky on purpose?

How would it, or anyone, do such a thing? We’ve seen that Desmond can travel back into his own body and change things in the past. We know that Ms. Hawking (the old woman who wouldn’t sell Desmond the ring) can do the same thing. It seems highly unlikely that they’re the only people that can do that.

Whether it’s the island’s properties that make this possible or it’s amplifying some people’s ability to control magnetism (which is what I believe Walt was doing) to do this, I’m not sure. I do think that Ben knows how this works, and that the Dharma Initiative was close to figuring this out (and might well have, setting Widmore on the path to find out more about the island).

I believe The Others have been doing this for a long time, trying to make things “right”. Just a nudge, here and there when possible.

If the people on the island had this ability, and they were under attack in the future, how could they set things into motion to get help? They’d use their abilities to travel back to their “earlier selves” to find the people they needed to help them. With the right guidance, they could engineer circumstances that caused those people to get on Oceanic 815, and get them onto the island so that when the time came, they could help defend against the attack.

The ability to travel back and influence events is the key for why Widmore (and possibly others) want Ben in the first place. Widmore thinks that control like that would let him rule the world… At least he thinks that. I think the Island has other ideas about that.

Did the Island Save Jack?


Quick question before LOST starts up again this week. (You did know that Lost starts again on the 24th, right?)

If you believe that the island didn’t let Michael do away with himself…. Do you think that the island didn’t let Jack do away with himself either? I think so.

In fact, this has much bigger implications. Locke has been saying all along that the island wanted them there, and could have aligned everything so those people got on that plane.

What do you think?

LOST Conference Call Details


Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune has an excellent write-up of the lost conference call held yesterday by executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. She’s broken everything up into “not spoilery”, “mild-to-medium” spoilers and “Heavy Duty Spoilers”.

A couple of “not spoilery” topics:

No LOST spinoffs planned.

There are 34 episodes left after this season is over.

and this interesting tidbit:


On what books “Lost” fans should be reading to prepare for the next two seasons: “Continue reading the Bible,” Cuse said.

For more spoilers, check out the article.

Survivor: I Promise…

Spoilers Ahead
A couple of rules of Survivor –


  1. If you go on a reward, don’t talk about the reward

  2. Never Trust a Deal Made During a Challenge

  3. Don’t Purposely Tick Off Your tribe mates

  4. Never Get Comfortable



All four of these rules were broken on tonight’s Survivor.

Ozzy talking about how great the challenge reward was didn’t win him any friends. I’m not sure if that helped end up leading to his downfall, but it couldn’t have helped.

What was Jason thinking? Getting a “guarantee” from your opponents during a challenge is no guarantee of any kind. Yau-Man can tell you that in great detail.

James making a lot of noise in the morning before an immunity challenge wasn’t smart to do either. Things like that add up.

Ozzy got comfortable, and didn’t work hard enough to make sure that he really was safe. That’s why he ended up getting voted up, much to his surprise, and to the surprise of his supporters. I think it’s one of the biggest blindsides Survivor has seen.

I have to say, Cirie is playing an excellent game. She’s engineered at getting at least three people getting voted off, and without people really stopping to realize she’s the one behind it. Parvati will probably take the biggest hit for Ozzie’s departure.

Should be interesting to see what happens next.

What did you think of tonight’s show?

Hell’s Kitchen Episode 3

You know, I like Gordon Ramsay. Not for his antics on Hell’s Kitchen, which are pretty much way over the top, but because of the BBC version of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. He’s tough, but he cares about helping people out of tough spots.

If you missed the show, you can watch it before reading further.

So, say what you want about the guy, but some of Gordon’s soft touch came through last night when Jason had a meltdown trying to remember the menu. Gordon actually talked him back into the dinner service, but Jason still blew it in the end.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there are only about four people on that show that even come close to making it to the end. The rest of them don’t look like they’re going to make it.